Morning Bell: Liberal Incoherence on Iraq

The more things change, the more they stay the same. The last time Gen. Davis Petraeus testified MoveOn.org tried to discredit the war effort by taking out a full-page ad in the New York Times labeling Petraeus “General Betray Us” that claimed he was lying about the levels of violence in Iraq. Seven months later it is now clear who had a better grasp on reality: From June 2007 through February 2008, deaths from ethno-sectarian violence in Baghdad have fallen approximately 90%. American casualties have also fallen sharply, down by 70%.

Undaunted by the ongoing success of the surge, anti-war groups have shifted focus from facts on the ground to made up numbers in the future. This time, MoveOn.org is trotting out economist Joseph Stiglitz, who has a new book claiming the Iraq war has cost American taxpayers $3 trillion. But Stiglitz readily admits that number is extremely fuzzy — off by as much as $2 trillion. He admitted to Bloomberg News: “We were trying to make Americans understand how expensive this war was so we didn’t want to quibble about a dime here or a dime there.” Also unpublicized by MoveOn, Stiglitz pegs the cost of the war in Afghanistan at $1.95 trillion. Does this mean the war in Afghanistan is also worth losing? The liberal anti-war activists don’t say.

Meanwhile, one of Sen. Barack Obama’s foreign policy campaign advisers has written a paper recommending as many as 80,000 U.S. troops stay in Iraq through 2010. This comes on top of former Obama adivser Samantha Power telling BBC News that Obama would “not rely on some plan that he’s crafted as a presidential candidate or a U.S. Senator.” And yet Obama’s website still promises the American people: “Obama will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. He will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months.”

The American people deserve a real debate about the costs and benefits of the policy options in Iraq. Not wildly speculative cost estimates admittedly off by trillions of dollars or campaign promises that senior advisers know to be wildly unrealistic.

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[…] the decision to remove Saddam from power has cost the U.S. $3 trillion. Leaving aside the fact that even Stiglitz admits his numbers may be off by as much as $2 trillion, few respected economists believe the assumptions underlying his numbers have any relation to […]

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